‘The Guernsey Time Bomb: Aging Demographic cannot be ignored’ was the theme at this
year’s IoD 24th Annual Debate. The evening included a range of speakers including the IoD
economist James Sproule who declared that ‘we are in the age of intellectualism’ an age of
ideas if you like, which established a hopeful tone for Guernsey's future. Followed by the
guest speaker Tim Harford, who explained a quick history of trading and investing and
explaining what a rolodex was to the few ‘students’ in the room. The panellists included Mel
Carvill, Wendy Dorman, Deputy Jonathan Le Tocq, Geoff Miller and Jane St Pier. The
evening was in full swing by 8 o’clock when the debate begun, moderated by the lovely and
energetic, Sarah Montague who tactfully weaved in between the audience and the panel to
ensure a range of responses and questions. The debate also used Twitter to garner as many
responses to the topics raised as possible which were to displayed during the debate which I
found gave the audience points to think about.
Deputy Jonathan Le Tocq stated that currently the dependency ratio of not working to
working is at 53:100 and is set to rise to a colossal 80:100. Guernsey simply cannot depend
on the fact that Guernsey has its own of system of taxation because that is being eroded in
Guernsey. Fact of the matter is tax advantages are no longer here and Guernsey has to act
fast to save the future.
Le Tocq also stated that we need the young people who are going off to university to return to
the Island to retain the standard of living, but surely if they want us to return to the Island
they should consider our views and take our opinions a bit more seriously.
Increasing the population was one solution the panel came up with, Mel Carvill stated he
was relaxed with ‘about 70k - 75k’ unfortunately no one on the panel could give us an exact
number or over how many years but they were certain that they did not want people to come
to Guernsey to retire, my question to this is how exactly are they going to restrict the people
they want on the Island.
To my surprise there was only one student table with 9 students, kindly donated by the Ana
Leaf Foundation, out of the whole 500 people in the room. The talk of increasing tax for
young earners so that we can pay for our generation’s pension and the generation prior
seems preposterous to me. If the States want to attract the young graduates back to
Guernsey to work then they have create more opportunities and more incentives for the
young graduates to return.
All in all the night was filled with information, possible solutions, and believe it or not a
hopeful and inspiring tone to the the future of Guernsey. With a lot to reflect on I feel
confident that Guernsey will take this crisis in its stride and come up with solutions that will
bring Guernsey to the stage of re-invention.
